The Pieces Fall Together
by Sahara Rose 101
Summary: Their relationship starts slowly, like puzzle pieces being slowly put together. But once they fit, they don't see how it could have gone any other way.
1. Chapter 1

Will first learns of Alana Bloom by reading one of her articles. He's impressed by her insight and concise prose. He forgets about the article in a few days. It's not relevant to his current case load.

He her name for the first time when he's informed that she will be guest lecturing in one of his classes that week. She's an important consultant for the FBI, the Guru's favourite; he's just the new teacher. He doesn't get a choice.

She sends him an email, asking what topics would be suited to his class. She's polite and amicable, apologising for the imposition. He replies with a list of topics he was going to cover himself.

The next day a printed copy of a lecture outline is left on his desk with a neatly handwritten note asking for his approval. She signs the note with a flourish. He emails her a cut yes after reading through it. It's a different approach to aggression than he would have chosen but it's an elegant one and perhaps more useful to the FBI trainees he's supposed to be teaching.

He has a free hour because of her lecture. He doesn't plan to attend the lecture but ends up loitering in the shadows near the doorway. She knows her material well. She invites and answers questions with a grace he envies. He watches her move across the lecture platform as though she was completely comfortable with 100 people staring at her. The clack of her high heels is hypnotic, commanding attention to her. He thinks that's her intent. Will leaves before the lecture finishes.

Two months later, she sends him an email asking him if he wants a guest lecture in three weeks. He knows that he has no choice but the polite veneer of choice is better than no choice, he thinks. He's not sure. And he enjoys the look of shock on the Dean of Academic's face when Will tells him that's already organised the lecture with her. No one expects him to do anything but talk at the floor in front of roomfuls of trainees.

She lectures on empathy and psychopathy. He abhors that topic. He appreciates her approach. She compares the two to the sun and moon, to yin and yang, explaining that one highlights the strengths and weakness of the other. He stays to the end of the lecture.

He meets for the first time the next day. She's sitting at the back of the Quantico cafeteria, cup of coffee in hand. It's early enough that the mid-morning coffee rush hasn't started. He hesitates for a moment. Everyone tells him that he must be more social. He's got to learn in order to function, to be polite. Introducing himself to a colleague who seemed to have a minor time share in one of his classes would be a place start, he tells himself.

"Hi."

She looks up, expression surprised but open. "Hi yourself." She's not alarmed by him, he can tell. She doesn't startle. It's almost like she expected him.

"I'm Will Graham." He thinks it's redundant but he says it anyway because that's what people do.

"Alana Bloom." She waves a hand at the seat opposite her. "I appear to have stolen your class."

He sits. "Not on a permanent basis, I hope." He was technically on still on his probationary period but those things were almost always a technicality.

"I'm sorry. It should be the last for a while." She looks down sheepishly, like she doesn't like that she's intruded on his classes.

"Your lecture on psychopathy was interesting." He chooses his words carefully. She obviously knew who he was. He wants to see how much she knew. "I haven't heard many people use a cost and benefit analysis for it before. Or put it on a continuum with empathy."

Alana shrugs. "You know, positive psychology and all that. Every cloud has a silver lining according to that perspective. Of course, those people probably haven't been stuck in a thunderstorm before." She closes her eyes and shakes her head. "I shouldn't say things like that." She opens her eyes.

"Because I'm stuck under the proverbial thunderstorm?" He watches her reactions closely. He'll judge her by how she answers him.

"Because," She picks up her coffee cup. "It's impolite to ridicule an emerging perspective because I disagree with metaphors." She looks him in the eyes. He looks away. "Unless you want to talk about-"

"I don't."

"Then we won't." She sips her coffee, leaving him to choose the next topic of conversation.

"Just like that? I thought all you psychiatrists love people like me." Most of them look at him like he belonged in a laboratory to be their ticket to a Nobel Prize. He hates it.

"Just like that. You're a colleague, Will, and quite possibly a friend. I don't push friends if they don't want to talk."

He leans back in the chair, deciding that she's being honest with him. "Do you like Georgetown?"


	2. Chapter 2

True to her word, Alana never broaches the topic of his problems. She comes to Quantico regularly now; sometimes she doesn't go back to Georgetown for days. There's a big case- something their keeping from the press. Will doesn't know the details. She doesn't talk about the case with him.

He finds her sitting in the cafeteria most mornings and he sits with her. They discuss everything but the case and his problems. She's quick to smile and has a darker humour than he expects.

The smile starts to fade as the weeks go on. One week she doesn't smile at all.

The next Monday he brings her a chocolate muffin because girls like chocolate and it has serotoninic properties and it's just what friends do.

When he places it in front of her, she looks up, her blue eyes highlighted are by circles too dark to be concealed by makeup. "Am I that pathetic?"

"No." He sits down, eyes on the table. "I remember what it's like. Food helps, if you can eat it." It's the first time he mentions what he used to do.

She doesn't react to his information. "You sound like my friend. He gave me a pointed lecture on the brain's nutritional needs last night. It was very informative. He forgot something though."

"What's that?"

"Chocolate cures all." She picks up the muffin and tears it in half, offering him the bigger half. "That and alcohol."

He takes the offered muffin. "I'm fairly certain that the FBI frowns on drinking on campus. Something about appearances and government funding."

She smiles. "It's one way to get out of work."

He smiles. "I'll keep it in mind."

He doesn't see her for a month. She sends him an email after three days informing him that she's gone interstate on the case. He sends a reply telling her to stay safe. She doesn't reply.

There's a breaking story on every news channel. The FBI has apprehended a serial killer suspected on murdering 10 women across the country. It doesn't take a genius to work out that's the case Alana was working on.

She's in the cafeteria the next day. He sits down, noting the muffin bag on the table. It's from the same place he bought the chocolate muffin from. "You caught him."

"The FBI caught him." She shrugs, wincing slightly. She tries to mask the flicker of pain across her face. "I just helped."

"You got hurt." He can tell it's her ribs by the way she's sitting. She's leaning to the left instead of her usual perfect posture.

"Two fractured ribs. He was a steroid user. He hulked out when I tried to assess him. Conduct Disorder or possible Anti-Social Personality disorder. Jack wouldn't let me back in."

"Which is why you're here instead of in his office filing your report." It's passive aggressiveness at its most obvious. He wonders how comfortable she is with her position to do such a thing. Jack Crawford has a reputation for a bark sharper than a lion's tooth.

"Yep." She nods. "And I owed you." Her phone beeps. She rolls her eyes. "I have to go. It was good to see you again, Will."

"You too." He opens the bag after she leaves. It's a vanilla cupcake. There's a lone candle enclosed in the bag. He remembers with a surprised blink that it's his birthday.

Alana comes to Quantico once a fortnight. She always sits in the same spot in the cafeteria. She never seeks him out. She's letting him set the boundaries. He likes that. He also thinks that she likes the predictability. She knows that he will come to her if he wants to. Which he does. Alana Bloom is the first person he counts as a true friend in a long time.

They compare horror stories about students. They talk about books, his dogs, and philosophy in general. Will thinks this is what a normal friendship is like.

She breaks the pattern when she emails him one night, asking him to meet her at the Starbucks near Quantico the next morning. He replies with an affirmative, curious.

She's waiting for him when he arrives five minutes early. She's jumpy, constantly tracing the logo of the Styrofoam cup in her hand. She meets his eyes but looks away before he can. It's a first for him.

"I've been asked to do a study on you."

He'd been expecting it, the thought niggling his brain like a snake scurrying for warmth. It still hurt. "Oh."

"I said no."

"Why? It would be a coup. There's no one like me." He sounds petulant and bitter to his own ears. He wonders what he sounds like to her, the one who categorises crazy for a living.

"You're my friend. I try not to study my friends. It impacts on the friendship." She seems angry. He can tell that it's not at him but the situation she's been put in. He knows her well enough that she has the morals of a saint. She wouldn't hurt him like this by choice.

"Try not and do not are two different things."

She sighs heavily. "I'm sorry Will."

He smiles tightly. "I'm used to being the new lab rat everyone wants to poke."

"You shouldn't be."

"Should be and are are also two different things." He leaves with a curt goodbye, digging his hands into his coat pockets.

Will doesn't go to the cafeteria the next time she's at Quantico. He goes the next fortnight. She's sitting at the table. There's an awkwardness when he sits down but it fades after she reads out a portion of an essay that had obviously been written the night before after too much caffeine.

Their pattern resumes.


	3. Chapter 3

He bumps into her literally as he walks out of his office. It's 9pm and no one else is supposed to be in the building apart from the cleaners. Will straightens and pushes his glasses higher on his nose. "You're here late."

"Jack called." It's code for there's a case. She never tells him directly when she's on a case. "I'm going to Florida for a few days." She smiles tightly then cocks her head at him, blue eyes narrowing. "You look tired."

"I had the first year trainees for a two hour lecture."

"Ah."

Someone yells in a room down the corridor and another person yells back. He turns at the sound, turning back to Alana just in time to see her roll her eyes.

"That's my cue. Honestly, you'd think some people had never learnt about inside voices." She moves to walk past him but stops. "Here." She presses the cup of coffee she was carrying into his hand. "If I finish it now I won't sleep tonight."

The coffee is still warm. "Thanks."

"You need it more I do right now." She smiles at him and leaves him in the empty hallway.

*/*

He teaches his classes, feeds his dogs and life is normal for a week. He wonders about Alana's case but stops himself from thinking about it too much. After two weeks, he gets a text from her. She says that she'll be back at Quantico the next day and if he sees Jack Crawford, walk the other way. The case didn't end well. Will knows from the Guru's reputation that he has a temper. He googles for news in Florida and reads about a woman who'd cut her cheating husband and his mistress into cubes and feed them to the fish in the pond by a school. She'd shot herself in front of the police.

Will buys her coffee the next morning. "For the last one I borrowed."

She eyes him like she knows that he's trying to cheer her up. "You didn't have to."

He shrugs as he sits beside her. "I wanted to."

"Thank you."

*/*

She sidles up to him at the compulsory staff Christmas party. He's sulking in a corner, counting down the minutes until he can escape. "The fire door is open if you want to make a run for it."

"My boss told me if I try to leave before 10, I'll be stuck teaching first years again next semester. He's trying to socialise me."

Alana moves to his other side, giving him a reason to glance to his left. "I'm fairly certain he won't notice." Will's boss had the starry eyed, red-flushed expression of someone who'd had too much of the spiked eggnog.

"Aiding and abetting an escapee from FBI custody is a felony, Dr Bloom." He smiles.

"I won't tell if you won't." She smiles back. "Merry Christmas Will." She kisses him on the cheek and goes back to the party. He slinks out of the room and goes home.

*/*

After he meets Hannibal, he calls Alana and asks her what's going on. She sighs heavily before explaining that Jack wants someone to be able to pull him back if he gets too close.

"Why isn't it you?" It's the logical answer to Jack's question. He knows that Will trusts Alana and he trusts Alana himself.

"Because," She hesitates before she answers. "You're not my patient." She expounds on Hannibal Lecter's skills for a minute, giving Will a little more faith in the doctor. If Alana thought he was one of the best, he probably was.

He tells her that he's going to Minnesota for the case; she tells him to be careful. He says he will.

When he's back in his hotel room after shooting Garret Jacob Hobbs, he calls her again. She picks up on the first ring and he knows that she knows. "Will."

He hadn't really planned what he was going to say. "Can you cover my classes for the rest of the week?" He doesn't think he could do it. All he can see every time he blinks is Hobbs' face. Every moment of silence is filled with Abigail's frantic, strained breathing.

"Of course. Are you okay?" He can hear the concern in her voice.

"No."

She takes his classes for week and a half.


End file.
